The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Loon-V2

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The Rise and Fall of Loon | Loon2Amir.com From then on he decided to abstain from past sins—drugs, alcohol, adultery and music. Crowd saw an immediate difference. “He was more caring, honest. He paid more attention,” she says. “Seeing the changes he was making was an inspiration.” Being a Muslim in Butner isn’t that bad, Muhadith says. Inmates can prepare their own food and are provided with a meal before dawn during Ramadan. As the prison imam, Muhadith continues to study Islam and teaches Arabic. “You see this guy behind us? Military guy,” he tells me without lowering his voice. “He said some derogatory remarks about Muslims that got back to me. I didn’t get mad. I approached him and said, ‘Seventy-two percent of Americans have never met a Muslim. Is it safe to say that you’re one of them?’ ” Muhadith places his hand on my shoulder. “Look, I don’t want people to think I’m a square,” he says. “I’m not a holy roller. I still have a personality. I still have a sense of humour.” His high-pitched giggle and deadpan wit—“It’s my cheat day,” he says when selecting an Almond Joy from the vending machine —are apparent. “I just have boundaries. Before, I had no boundaries.” Soon after his spiritual awakening, Muhadith’s life took another significant turn. For years he’d heard whispers that Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, a former associate of Nicky Barnes’s who’d served 13 years for manslaughter, was his biological father. After hanging out with Hayden, Muhadith noticed similarities. “Something about his style,” he says, “the way he walked, the way he talked.” Muhadith hopes to take a DNA test soon. Who does he think is his father, Burger Hughley or Jazz Hayden? “I don’t know. I’m 41 years old and I’m not sure who my father is,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. Both are hood royalty.” He then smiles. “Ask my mom. I’m curious what she’d say.” Two weeks later, I meet Carol Hawkins on the corner of 116th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, outside the First Corinthian Baptist Church, where she worships. She wears furry Steve Madden boots, khakis and a plaid shirt with a cream wool sweater coat over it. Her hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. We drive uptown in her black Nissan Pathfinder before parking on 148th Street in front of Esplanade Gardens. Then she tells the story of how she met Nicky Barnes. 10
The Rise and Fall of Loon | Loon2Amir.com One day on her way home from tennis, she spotted a handful of police officers with binoculars at a gas station on 150th Street. As she walked toward her building, she recognized Barnes, by that point a notorious neighbourhood figure, at the bus stop. She warned him about the surveillance and offered to hide his stash in her parents’ apartment. “Ever since then, I was holding drugs,” she tells me. “After I started making all that money, I didn’t want to go to school no more.” He does admit to sometimes thinking about rap, comparing the sensation to what a recovered alcoholic must feel when walking past a liquor store. She met Burger Hughley soon after. He was older, at least 15 years her senior, and he showered her with money, clothes and attention. The fact that he was married didn’t affect the relationship. “I wouldn’t have cared if he had five wives,” Hawkins says. “He was making me happy.” The drug game was lucrative, and Hawkins soon owned fur coats, a Cadillac, a Mercedes. Sometimes they’d drive to the airport and, on a whim, pick somewhere warm to fly. San Juan, Vegas and Acapulco were among their favourite destinations. When I ask her what specifically the money was like, all she can do is look up and mutter, “Oh God, oh man.” A beat passes before she turns and says, “I used to make more than $20,000 a day.” It didn’t last, of course. “I got up with that crack,” she explains. After her son’s proposition—he’d stop selling drugs if she’d stop using them—Hawkins went to rehab in Rochester, New York, where she found God. She is now sober and works for a community health organization. A devout Christian, she tells me she’s nothing but supportive of Muhadith’s conversion to Islam. “He has found peace in his life,” she says. “He found a god he loves and serves. Even though he calls him Allah, he’s the same God I love and serve.” I ask if she knows definitively who fathered Muhadith. “No, I don’t, to be honest,” she says, speaking deliberately. “I do know for sure that I was in Vegas with Jazz and the math added up to Jazz, but I didn’t want to hurt Burger’s feelings because he was walking around being such a proud dad. I don’t know. I was young. I made an executive decision to just say that it was Burger. It kept away a lot of hurt and explaining.” Hayden, now a community activist, did not respond to e-mails. 11
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